OpenIntents File Manager
Android doesn't come with a file browser, so you'll need to download one, and OI is our favourite. It lets you access all the files on your phone or its memory card, and allows you to copy, paste or delete them. You can do the same with filled folders too. This is very handy, as uninstalling an app often leaves associated rubbish on your phone taking up valuable space. With OI you can simply remove the entire redundant program folder. OI also integrates with Googlemail allowing you to send just about any file directly as an attachment.
Reg Rating 90%
Price Free
More Info Open Intents
Advanced Task Killer
All these pesky little apps running away in the background can seriously slow your Android phone down even if it comes with a stack of Ram and a 1GHz processor. The easy fix is Advanced Task Killer: just launch it, hit the big Kill button at the top of the list of running programs and everything non-essential is turned off, including itself. You can remove programs from the kill list if you so desire, which means you that your favourite Twitter client or whatever will still update in the background and happily it doesn't interfere with HTC's Sense overlay.
Reg Rating 95%
Price Free
More Info Rechild
Ten Essential Android Apps
COMMENTS
My Top Ten
Not being a social network victim and travelling more by public transport than car:
1. Task Manager (Wing Tseng). More sophisticated than ATK and has a handy widget to kill all background tasks.
2. BeebPlayer (David Johnston). No argument there. Top application, and free, too.
3. EStrongs File Explorer (EStrongs). Manipulate files on device, SD card and Windows shares.
4. WiFi Analyser (farproc). Does exactly what it says on the tin, and does it well.
5. Movies (Flixster). What's on, where its on, what time its on. Reviews (Rotten tomatoes) and previews.
6. National Rail (croworc). Train timetables and live times. A bit flaky but the only App available.
7. RealCalc (Brain Overspill). Excellent scientific calculator.
8. MyTracks (Google) Because I sometimes like to know where I've been.
9. BBC News (Jim Blackler). Convenient source of news. Headlines widget.
10. Tricorder (Moonblink). Because I'm a geek.
RE: backup
Nandroid backup. The importance of this facility cannot be stressed enough. It's got me out of a couple of tight holes.
Of course, this requires an unlocked bootloader. If you don't have one of these, please buy an iPhone and stop reading El Reg.
Re: Just shows what a rush job Android is
Quote: "Android's got a long way to go to catch up with iPhone, which has almost pushed me back to the Apple camp."
Get real! The iPhone didn't even have cut'n'paste, video recording, mms, etc etc until relatively recently. If anything is "rush job" it's the fruitphone's OS.
Really useful review, thanks.
Just confirmed once again that I have absolutely no need of a smartphone, whether Android or from the Blessed Jobs! I'll stick to a simple mobile phone (that can both make and receive phone calls and texts - brilliant!) and a real computer for any serious work. Saved me a fortune - ta!
ok but....
would have been nice if for each product you had listed minimum android version. Us poor Hero users are still stuck in the dark ages of 1.5 waiting on HTC so no doubt some of those apps wont work.
